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‘I hear all the time that words are violence. Words are not violence. Violence is violence.’ Gov Cox of Utah.
Chris Hedges' take is that first we saw those who protested the genocide (Gaza) attacked as anti Semites although 20 or 30% were probably Jewish. That was a way to shut down free speech. Then we saw undocumented workers called criminals as a way to build Trump's version of the Brown Shirts, ICE with all their detention centers, rogue paramilitary, budget larger than all law enforcement combined. Now the Radical Left is being painted negatively in order to shut down individuals and organizations that dissent in this development of an authoritarian state.
We don't have evidence yet that Trump will go that far, but we actually haven't seen any evidence that he wouldn't allow it to. When people have engaged in negative social actions (censorship etc) to his favor, he has praised them and smiled at their actions publicly. And in history we've seen that by the time history's dictators went too far, it was sort of too late for the citizens or opposition to do anything anymore.
Hedges pointed out that for all Trump's repeated talk about ‘flag burning’, when was the last flag burning. He said he doesn't remember one (recently).
Citizens should, though, burn the flag as often as they pledge alegiance to it, probably, because when we see people burn the flag we understand that they understand they have that right, to say what they want, even if it's unpopular, even if it's against the government or the powerful.
Hedges theorized that the White House will now use Kirk to carry out activities like shutting down organizations that are critical of the Trump party, and to look to Miller who is organizing all this. Maybe like Democracy Now. That anything that stands in the way of these things, they will label as a betrayal of what Kirk stood for.
He calls them ‘Christian facism,’ Christian heretics.
What organizations remain in the US to protect its open society?
There might be an intersection of white men and Christian nationalism, since Kirk and similar sort of existed in that nexus, Hedges.
It appeals to disenfranchised white males, and most of the people in the US now. Most Americans, especially young, are disengranchised, Hedges theorized, but it plays well to white males.